Indian Railways Reports

Mysore Steam Run

2004-06-07

K K Subramaniam

Last Sunday the SBC team got together and visited MYS to participate in the steam heritage run.Please find the detailed trip report below.

I reached SBC at 6:00 a.m and went to the main station side ticket counter - all counters had long queues as quite a few trains leave SBC between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning. I think it is high time SWR increased the no of counters in the station.

After buying my ticket I walked towards PF 6 where Raghu was waiting for me. As I had picked my mobile phone with camera, it became easy to click the beauties in the station. I clicked 22220 ED WAP4 with lalbagh and ED EDM2c waiting to haul the Salem Passenger to PF1 after Lalbagh cleared. Walking upto PF 6 I saw the TJ-MYS express coming on the same platform just behind hauled by a GOC WDM2. The train had 1 SLR, 2 GS, 1 3A, 1 2A, 9SL, 2 GS and 1 SLR.

We comfortably perched ourselves in the GS behind the engine.

As we were leaving the 6222 Cauvery express to mysore came on PF5.

We left at 6:45 and trundled along till KGI as there was a speed restriction of 50 kmph. After crossing KGI we reached cruised at a speed of 95 kmph, till we reached Settihalli where we stopped for a crossing with chamundi express. This was a rather badly planned crossing as we spent 20 minutes here, while we could have been taken to Maddur and the crossing could have happened there.

Anyway even as we cursed this we got a few foto ops and raghu and i were happy clicking away. We left Setihalli at 8:05 and reached Mandya at 8:35 and left mandya at 8:37 and reached Mysore at 9:20 a.m. - 10 mins before time.

After reaching mysore we enquired for tickets for steam run. Only to realise that there were no tickets, we persisted and were asked to come back half hour later.

We had our breakfast and went to the ticket counter, where the CRS told us that the train was over booked and hence no tickets were available.

Raghu and I told him that we would be willing to travel by engine if need be. However this was laughed off by the CRS and we were given tickets for after noon special. As we were buying our ticktes we met karthik M.V who had come for the same. After buying our tickets we stepped out and photographed the steam loco WP 7200 from NR.

After photographing it to our heart's content, we moved over to the mysore outer where we photographed the station and the steam run in the backdrop of the majestic chamundi hills.